


How Do Frogs Escape?

by sp8ce



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Bipolar Sollux Captor, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Frogs, Interplanetary Travel, Kissing, Mania, One Shot, Repression, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23293726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sp8ce/pseuds/sp8ce
Summary: She isn’t supposed to care. Your brain can fizzle and boil and hiss, but you won’t let the lid fly off. You’ll beat fundamental properties of life.
Relationships: Sollux Captor/Aradia Megido
Comments: 14
Kudos: 22





	How Do Frogs Escape?

You would think that flying through time and space would make you calm down. You would think that hitting the land of a planet a little too hard, like the nature of existence just turned too much on its side and twisted your perception off balance, would knock some fatigue in you. You would think you would think you would think.

“Are you okay?” she says. She squints at you, always so discerning, and you know she isn’t referring to your quasi-bisected mortality or the way the ground can still somehow knock the air out of your system.

It terrifies you.

She isn’t supposed to care. Your brain can fizzle and boil and hiss, but you won’t let the lid fly off. You’ll beat fundamental properties of life. You’re not going to crack. You’re made out of shame for even knowing her. She seems to be the only thing in your think pan these days, the only thing the universe, as defined by you, is. Then again, isn’t she technically the god of time?

You know usually she prefers you like this. It leaves you hollow and choking when you remember it when you’re depressed and empty. You think you’re also easier to manage like that, though, which enrages you so much as the thought slides into your head that you feel nothing but uncontaminated rage towards her for all but a few seconds, before the fear hits you back, square in your chest, and makes you ache and long for pure hatred of the most important person in your life. Anything to rid the sharp hook in your chest suspending you.

“I am a picture of perfect health. The epitome of it. Whoever decided to make the word “health” lives in pathetic fucking shame every day and night for not giving credit where credit it was due and telling the entire empire that I was the definition of “health.” Well, I say, give me the money, bitch,” you respond. She just stares at you for about two seconds before dramatically rolling her eyes. You have a problem with being incapable of lying. So the more untrue your statement is, the more you pile on the fucking sarcasm. The more bitter you are, the more dramatic you get. It can’t be a lie if you sound like a jackass.

You’re trying to avoid being superfluous. You’re scared she’ll just leave any second if you can’t reign it in. The words you wish to say seem like they’ll jump out of your throat like your body is a pond for frogs and the frogs realise there is a threat coming that they must escape from. Or would the frogs just go underwater? Maybe you should ask Aradia about that; you’re certain she’d know. Wait, that’s the fucking point, to shut your fucking trap. Mission: not-ask-Aradia about-how-frogs-respond-to-impending-disaster meets another tough battle but is successful. 

“Are you depressed again?” she asks. You hate it. Usually, she ignores your moods and your incessant doom, and you  _ thrive _ on that because as much as you crave her help, her support, you know what would happen if she actually registered you as who you are. The way that Feferi took you on like a pet project like you were one of her fish. Aradia has known you since before this, since you were just an obnoxious wiggler who’d get thrown into the pits of despair or a cosmic sense of understanding throughout the day. You lost her once, and it was the worst thing you’ve ever gone through. And you’ve met other Sollux’. You’ve met Sollux’s that were tortured, who were brutally murdered, who were broken apart emotionally or physically in ways you can barely have horrorterrors about. But all of them agree: losing Aradia is worse than anything else. Being forced to kill Aradia is worse than anything else. Whichever fuckers among you experienced that wins the fucking prize. And yeah, it’s a totally different thing for her to just get sick of you. You’d probably feel... happy for her? Relieved it’s over? But to every fake-ass religion out there you BEG to not have to lose her again.

“I am not depressed, AA, and that’s the truth. Drop it.” There is a reason why you refused to ever call her your moirail.  _ No one should ever be moirails with you _ .

“The more you close up, the worse it is though!” she gives out, frustration in her tone. Well no duh. What is your life if not never-ending cycles of  _ fucked. _

How easy it would be to ruin everything. How easy it would be to break her fucking heart in ways no one ever could. How easy it would be to say everything in your head right now too, get it all out, or finally lie instead, craft cruel untruths into a tapestry of hatred and spitefully spit it in her face. How easy it would be to turn the world you live in to ash and hurt who you love the most. What consequences even exist? How easy it would--

“Good reasons for it, okay?” you finally cut your quick-paced monologue off.

“But how am I supposed to tell you when you’re being unreasonable then?” She rests her elbow on her knee as her legs are crossed and her rosy cheek on her hand. It’s adorable. “I can’t tell you to shut up if you don’t give me anything to work with.”

“Oh so you want me to blather on like an imbecile just to deject my concerns and have a good ol’ laugh at me. I should give you every chance to tell me to shut my fucking mouth huh?”  _ Fuck _ .

“Ah, so we’re here,” she says, and she smiles. But your breath has become rapid because you didn’t realise you’d gotten like  _ this.  _ It happened faster than you thought it would, the rising tide in your chest like your ugly yellow blood is following your giant ego up into the sky like a moon is crossing by. Is your pusher going to kill you?

“I’m... I’m so sorry, AA. I didn’t mean to lash out,” you apologise. You think you’re about to burst into tears. Literally. You wish the spectacle would look like a supernova instead of a pinata explosion of yellow sludge.

“Make it up by talking to me,” she says. Sometimes, you think, she might be actually a bit evil. You see the glint in her eyes right now. How do you tell her this despicable feeling in your chest is all tied to her? Not  _ because  _ of her, of course, because of you, but tied to her because nothing you can tell yourself can ease the fear you’re going to lose her, and nothing you can tell yourself can make that do anything but make you feel like you’re about to  _ die _ .

“What do you want to talk about?” you ask instead, electing to play dumb.

“ _ Sollux Captor _ ,” she sighs. “How I can help, I guess.”

How do you tell her you don’t want her help? That you like the way she ignores the issues? If she knew for a second how much you craved false reassurances for all your fears, to express your deepest fears or your prophetic highs and she knew better than anyone were beyond what was actually real, she would try to take it all in for you. And if she did that, just like Feferi, she’d leave. No one can stand you in your full intensity. Not even the god of time who can bathe in the light of the green sun.

“I... I don’t know,” you admit, your voice vulnerable now. “The fears feed into each other.”

You’re pretty sure she’s the most beautiful thing that has ever existed, even if your brain is wrong about her being the only thing that has ever existed.

“Okay,” she says. “Try, harder?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to lose you.”

“You’re not!” You think you might cry.

“I feel like I am.”

“But you’re not...”

“I don’t think you can fix any of my thoughts,” you admit. If anything, she’ll make them worse.

But she gives you that look, like you’re a puzzle. She smiles and it’s greater than any sun in existence. You could travel across any universe and fly into every single star and not feel the warmth and radiance you do looking at her.

She puts her hand on yours, and slides over beside you, pulling you into a hug. 

Your brain whites out. 

She kisses your cheek, then meets the corner of your mouth. You turn your head to catch her lip, and kiss the most magnificent troll in any universe. The pain in your chest vanishes because the only thing your think pan can process is her. Like you’re finally connected so you don’t have to be skewered. 

You don’t understand, really. None of your fears should be calmed by the touch of the girl you love. This doesn’t mean she’s any less likely to leave. And how could it change the chemical state running awry in your mutated hell of a body? 

You’re pretty sure, like everything, it comes down again to the duality. To bisection.

There is the mental. And there is the physical. And somehow, her touch can override every single one of your thoughts. It doesn’t have to be logical. It’s outside of logic because it’s its own separate thing. And she owns it completely.

She kisses you more, and you just feel soft to her. She could do anything to you. And you would worship it.

“Is this okay,” she asks tentatively after a bit. 

“More than,” you respond. The words feel sticky in your throat. You kiss some more, then lay down beside each other, holding hands under the stars of some foreign planet you’ve never been to before. Under a new sky with patterns of stars you’ve never seen like this. 

“AA...” you finally ask; she squeezes your hand.

“Hm?”

“If there was an impending disaster, would frogs escape underwater or opposite way of the threat?”

You want to hear her talk for  _ hours _ . 

(After all, it turns out it depends on the species of frog, and what planet they’re from).

**Author's Note:**

> me: writes ANOTHER one shot but this time it's arasol not aravris or erisol


End file.
